Income increasingly dividing Portland’s neighborhoods, report says

More neighborhoods in Portland are segregated by income today than they were 30 years ago, but compared to other U.S. cities, the Portland-metro area is still economically diverse.

According to a report released this month by the Pew Research Center, residential segregation by income has increased during the past three decades in 27 of the nation’s 30 largest metropolitan areas. The report found that the conglomeration of lower-income households located in majority lower-income census tracts increased from 23 percent in 1980 to 28 percent in 2010. Upper income households located in majority upper-income census tracts increased 9 percent over the same period to 18 percent in 2010.

Richard Fry, a senior research associate at the Pew Hispanic Center and an author of the report, said the same trend was true for Portland but to a lesser degree than the rest of the nation.

“I would cite Portland and Minneapolis and Orlando (Fla.) as sort of standing out as three metros where, relative to the other 27 (major metropolitan areas), their degree of income segregation is the least,” he said. “In other words, relative to the other 27, Portland’s affluent households are not highly congregating.”

The report evaluated metros based on what it called a Residential Income Segregation index – a number researchers created by adding together the share of lower- and higher- income households living in neighborhoods with similar economic demographics. A score of 200 means 100 percent of households live in areas where neighbors are in the same income bracket.

The Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro-metro area’s RISI score increased six points over the past 30 years to 25. Both the Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington and Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford metros decreased one point to 28 and 22, respectively.

Conversely, the metro areas with the largest amount of change in residential segregation by income were those located in the southwest. The San Antonio-New Braunfels metro area increased 24 points to 63; the Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown metro area increased 29 points to 61; and the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metro area increased 21 points to 60.

Fry said Portland was unique among all of the 30 major metro areas in that no upper-income census tracks were present in the city in the 1980s. Now there are a few.

He said it’s something to watch because as lower-income households get concentrated into low-income neighborhoods, community barriers begin to arise. For instance, kids begin to drop out of school and adults lose access to vital networking opportunities.

“The classic example too is if you think of communities that are trying to raise revenue,” Fry said. “In America, we rely on a property tax base. When (neighborhoods) are heavily low income, property taxes go down and there are concerns over whether they can raise revenue for essential public services.”

One comment

It definitely affects the abilities of the people who live there to find higher-paying jobs & clients if they spend their free time volunteering within their own neighborhood. I short-change myself by helping out my community because, as a professional, I never meet anyone who has money to spend. Therefore I can’t get jobs through my community contacts. If I were to reach out to communities with money to spend I wouldn’t have time to help out my own.